Six months before the election to the European Parliament in May 2019, the prospects are bleak. If politicians can show that they are willing to respond to the real needs of the people and are able to connect local issues with the European level, there might still be hope for the European elections.

In Poland, the first generation in 200 years of Polish history grows up in a free country and supposedly has a different mindset towards European integration according to Łukasz Pawłowski. Traditional national party system is eroding and traditional centre parties are failing to deliver and lose votes to both sides of the political spectrum, explains Julian Rappold.

Judith Sargentini warns against outsourcing political decisions to judges. Instead of asking for sanctions, European leaders need to call directly on the individual responsibility of politicians in the respective countries. Colombe Cahen-Salvador from Volt aims to work locally on city levels and at the same time, establish a pan European party to be elected into the European parliament in May next year. But can politics without ideology work?

The event took place on 6 November 2018. The panelists were , European Policy Lead and co-founder of ‘Volt’, Łukasz Pawłowski, managing editor and regular contributor at Kultura Liberalna, Julian Rappold, Project Leader of ‘Connecting Europe’ and ‘FutureLab Europe’ at the European Policy Centre (EPC) and Judith Sargentini, Member of the European Parliament (Greens/EFA). The debate was moderated by Klaus Linsenmeier, Head of Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union, Brussels).